Themes
by Narilsa
Summary: A series of themes done for the 30 Kisses challenge. SasukeSakura, done as canonly as possible: which means there isn't going to be much in the way of fluff here.


A series of themes done for the 30 Kisses challenge. The idea is you're given a theme, and you write something about it: making sure to incorporate a kiss in there in some manner. Sasuke/Sakura, as realistically-done as possible. No fluff here, kids.

The name of the theme comes first. The actual title for the snippet comes second.  
-  
-  
-

**6.** the space between dream and reality - _Vision_

His eyes are half-open, and he is drowsy and still mostly asleep. He is looking out at the world through his lowered lashes, perceiving the world hazily from the space between sleep and wakefulness.

He is looking at her without seeing her. He does that quite often.

She looks at him, and she sees a twelve year-old boy lazing in the sun: soft eyes veiled beneath his lashes and his body relaxed. There is no tension in this Sasuke. The puppetstrings have not yet drawn taut again; they have not yet jerked him back into his role as implacable vengeance.

Her eyes linger on his lashes, and she wonders what it might be like to feel them flutter against her skin.

And then, inevitably, he awakens fully. His eyes close, and reopen with a ninja's immediate alertness. The walls have snapped down and frosted over.

Sakura looks away, then. She would rather try to preserve her vision of him as something gentle and indolent than look at hard reality.

**29.** the sound of waves - _Ellipses_

All is silent. There is only the lap of water on the sand.

She looks over at him. His figure is outlined by the burnished rays of the setting sun. The tips of his hair scatter watery, weak light.

"Sasuke-kun..." she starts, a blush creeping over her cheekbones. Fingertips trace nonsensical patterns in the sand. A hesitant, nervous smile inchworms over her lips.

He looks over at her, inscrutable and impassive. Dark eyes close the distance between them, and become her world. Whatever she was going to say wilts on the tip of her tongue, and she swallows her forgotten words bitterly.

He regards her mutely a few moments more, before he looks back to the ocean. Sakura can think of no way to salvage the situation, and she too turns her eyes back to the sea.

Only the sound of waves kissing the shore is left to fill the silence.

**22.** cradle - _By the Wayside_

Even though he has fifty needles through his body, she manages to cradle him close in her arms. She is heedless of the stabbing ends that prevent her from holding him against her. She is heedless of the rest of the world. Her head bends over his body as she draws him close: so close that her lips brush his jawline.

He has since stopped moving. His final words were for Naruto, not her. Never her. Though they were a team of three, he would sooner speak to his rival than offer some parting phrases for the odd girl out. She knows that that has always been the way of things, and her face reflects her resignation. For Sasuke, competition, power, and preeminence in combat have always taken precedence over devotion, loyalty, and love.

When Sasuke wakes up, he finds that there are tears on his face which do not belong to him.

**19.** red - _Sharingan_

When Sasuke's eyes close and reopen red, Sakura is always secretly intimidated.

His normal dark eyes, at least, could occasionally carry the illusion of warmth, pleasure, or gentleness. They could occasionally connote some lingering remnants of humanity within him. They had the potential to be eyes she could have gladly met while in the midst of a kiss.

There is nothing of that in the matched Sharingan which he opens to the world in times of bitterness or battle.

When Sasuke looks at the world through Sharingan eyes, Sakura finds it harder to fool herself into believing that there is sweetness or humanity somewhere beneath that copy-wheel gaze.

Sasuke uses the Sharingan as a screen to filter the world red: red for blood, red for anger, and red for hatred.

But never red for love.

**3.** jolt! – _Eye for an Eye_

Sasuke has never learned that lashing out is not always the best way to resolve things.

He saw Itachi's madness firsthand when he was eight: far too young to realize that his brother should not be listened to and that his insanity is nothing to emulate. He has watched Itachi's madness again and again in those Mangekyou Sharingan; and he has watched it so many times, while pinned beneath his brother's unrelenting grasp, that his immediate response to anything severely distressing is to strike out blindly. After all, it's usually his brother on the other end, holding him down: just within arm's reach. It's usually his brother causing him pain, and it's always his brother who he wants to hurt.

When Sasuke and Sakura fight, he meets her blow for blow. Her blows are metaphorical; his are not.

He never learned that violence was not an acceptable way to solve all his problems. Itachi taught him that when you are hurt, you seek blood revenge. No one ever taught him differently, and no one can change him now. He uses violent blows as casually as others use violent words.

When Sakura visits with her friends, she kisses them lightly on the cheek in an affectionate greeting which she could never have used with Sasuke: even despite the fact that the two of them are in a "relationship." She sits down with them, she has a cup of tea, and she laughs as easily as any of the others.

When Sakura visits with her friends, she wears long sleeves to hide the bruises and a smiling face to hide the shame.

**13.** excessive chain - _Control_

Sasuke never quite got over his taste for power, nor his lust for the feeling of utter control.

He derives that pleasure from-- among other things-- the feeling of having someone completely at his mercy. There's a feeling of power that comes from seeing the fear in someone's eyes, right before the killing stroke is landed. Every time he is poised on the verge of the kill, he pauses; he knows he could stay his hand. But the moment he thinks that, he hears Itachi's voice: taunting him for his weakness. And he always silences that voice the only way he knows how: by completing the kill.

It brings him the most wonderful sensation, feeling his brother's mocking words seep away impotently with the blood. For him, pleasure has been linked inextricably with pain, death, and power.

He fucks her after he binds her down with chains and straps and leather. He fucks her with a kunai between his teeth. Part of what turns him on about that is the fact that Sakura can't even be sure that he won't use it against her. That fact makes her pretty eyes go wide with fear, and that expression brings a feeling of power: a feeling of perverse pleasure.

She can be sure he wouldn't kill her, of course-- he's made that clear-- but she can't be sure he won't let a little blood.

His lithe hands twine in the sheets on either side of her shoulders until his knuckles stand out whitely.

"Sasuke-- _Sasuke_-- hurts-- stop--" Her hands grasp at his bare shoulders. Her hands flutter like panicky butterflies against his chest. She would move her legs, but they're chained to the bedposts.

He didn't chain her hands because he likes to feel her struggle.

He could stop--

_Are you that weak... little brother? Can you not finish what you start?_

His teeth grit. His hands shift to her fluttering wrists, pinning them to the bed. The fear in her eyes is not unlike the fear he has seen in the eyes of the people he has killed.

He could stop--

_Live miserably. Survive through your own pain. Derive strength from it, and come before me when your eyes are like mine._

Itachi's eyes were cold. There was nothing in them. Sasuke knows there are still feelings and emotions in his own. He can't face Itachi until all those weaknesses are gone.

It hurts him that he's hurting her. It hurts him immensely. And that terrible pain is what will make him strong, so strong: undefeatable. If he can endure unimaginable pain like this, the reward will be unimaginable power.

"Sasuke--

He silences her with a brutal kiss.

**27.** overflow – _In Passing_

It is tumultuous and unpredictable, being on the same team as him: being _with_ him. It is blissful, it is frustrating, it is wonderful, and it is perpetual overflow of the emotions in multivariate ways.

The days pass by. Missions pass by.

They grow accustomed to one another; the intimacy that the conditions of most missions forces upon them makes sure of that. Sasuke forgets his reticence; he no longer pays any mind whether she's looking or not before he strips his shirt off to go to sleep on hot nights. He no longer makes a fuss about sharing his chopsticks if Sakura has dropped hers in the dirt; which is, Sakura reflects pleasedly, probably the closest to kissing Sasuke anyone has ever gotten (she selectively forgets about that incident with Naruto). He no longer cares quite so much if she talks his ears off. Sometimes he even seems to smile at her; even if the expression's nothing more than a certain shift in the tenor of his gaze.

The days pass by. Itachi passes by.

He no longer smiles at her, not even with his eyes; the rift between them seems to widen, and nowadays there's nothing in his eyes but anger. He grows gradually more and more anxious, snapping at her whenever she tries to get close. It confuses her. He has let her in far more than she had ever dreamed she could be let in, and now he pushes her away with both hands. What saddens her most is how far he's regressing, back to his hatred and back to his anger; Sasuke had made such _progress_ towards humanity, in her eyes. She desperately wants to help him through his time of pain, and so she offers all of herself to him; whatever she has that would aid him, she would give up freely.

He doesn't want any of it, and she doesn't realize that the more she gives of herself, the more he'll try to push her away. She doesn't realize that her very selflessness towards him is precisely what he wants to eradicate.

**26.** if only I could make you mine - _Priorities_

He's made her cry again. Her sobs are broken and gasping. They're grating on his ears, and he wishes desperately to be elsewhere. He doesn't want to have to waste time listening to this. He doesn't want this to progress to a more troublesome level than it's already reached. If he allows her to get any more attached, it will become harder for him to keep her distant from him.

And people who get close to him only get hurt. They're burdens. They're in the way.

Love is in his way.

"If only-- if only--"

Sakura's sobs measure out the length of his silence.

"If you were _mine_--"

Sasuke closes his eyes. When he speaks, his words are measured and hard: as distant, mechanical, and methodical as the kisses of a unfaithful lover. "I will never be yours. It isn't your job to fix me or protect me. Stay out of it."

He walks away assured in his belief that he has done what is best for both of them, and never once looks back at her stricken face.


End file.
